Georgian Restaurant Kaliningrad the Magic of Kavkaz

It’s magic at Kavkaz

31 December 2024 ~ Georgian Restaurant Kaliningrad the Magic of Kavkaz

Like many towns and cities in Christendom, the centre of Kaliningrad undergoes a magical transformation over the festive season. Victory Square becomes a yuletide theatre, a stage of glittering silver motifs, including a life-sized Santa’s sleigh with reindeers and a larger-than-life iconic assemblage of 2025 numerals. A lofty, conical Christmas tree transitions through a dramatic series of illuminating colour contrasts. The commercial buildings that border the square are, for want of a no less appropriate term, all lit up like Christmas trees, whilst the municipal building facing the square takes the Christmas biscuit, with its symmetry of grazing lights gently and slowly ringing the changes in complementary hues through a violet, blue and turquoise spectrum.

Sleigh and reindeers Victory Square Kaliningrad

Welcome 2025 Victory Square, Kaliningrad

We were on our way to the Kavkaz Restaurant, and our route would take us across this bewitching bespangled world. I had one eye on the white magic and one eye on the black. In England, this is de rigueur nowadays, especially during the festive season, for every day and every way is a possible Christmas Market. Happy Christmas (and every day) from Britain’s politicians.

With no discernible goblins grabbing at the ghoulies, I felt safe to take my camera out and shoot some snaps for the folks back home. It was then, at that moment, I saw her: a Christmas angel with very long legs, wearing a skirt that was far too short for winter ~ whatever could she be thinking of? ~ and a pair of black leather boots. As amazing as she was, she was just another stocking filler. The real angel was yet to come. She was waiting for us in Victory Square, silver-white with wings to match, a tribute to the Christmas props with which she was surrounded. She was poised in the centre of Victory Square: a photograph waiting to happen.

“Oh, please take a photograph of me, next to the angel!” Olga pleaded. She knows that I have a limited tolerance to taking smartphone photos for the sake of harvesting ‘likes’ on social media. But that is part of the magic of Christmas, the willingness to make concessions for no other reason than because it is Christmas.

It was hard to resist the angel. She looked the perfect angel, with her voluminous white and silver wings, and here I am confessing that for all my reservations about incessant, gratuitous photo-taking, I myself was beyond redemption to get in on the act. The angel must have had some inkling of her photogenic allurement, as she had thoughtfully brought along with her a second set of wings, not so big and so bold as her own, but like the halos she also carried, convenient and prop sized.

Mick Hart with an angel in Victory Square, Kaliningrad

When your halo is a permanent fixture, you have no need for apparatus, but I was chuffed about the wings. I never knew until I watched Frank Capra’s Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life!, the most highly rated Christmas film of 1946 and notably of all time, that angels have to earn their wings, although I have often paused to wonder why mine are so long coming.

The angel, like angels should be, was only too pleased to oblige when we asked to take a photo with her. But just before we assumed the position, she whispered the secret to us that even angels as endowed as they are with all their celestial powers needed to keep the wolf from the door, so a small charge, a small gratuity, 200 roubles in fact, would stamp the seal on the deal. What is 200 roubles, I thought, in the collection box of Christmas. Is it not better to give than receive!

So, with the contract duly signed, Olga and then myself, encouraged by the angel, adopted various angelic-hugging poses, whilst first one then the other snapped away with my mobile phone.

At the conclusion of our photoshoot, we took out our 200 roubles only to be angelically told that we had run up a bill of 1000 roubles, as the going rate for angels was 200 roubles a photograph and not, as we had thought, 200 roubles a sesh. Well, blow me down with seraphim wings, you do learn something every day.

A thousand roubles lighter, we took three or four more photographs without the angel within the Square, which only cost us our time, and then we muggered off to Kavkaz restaurant.

Kavkaz Restaurant revisited

Cool in the summer, both kinds of cool, Kavkaz is in winter forever warm and welcoming, and now with its twinkling Christmas lights festively fondling the susceptible cockles of a receptive holiday heart, no less tender from having been shared with the angel, we were pulled with the ease of a Christmas cracker into Kavkaz’s spellbinding charm.

In an instant and magnificently, staff within this palatial place are swarming all around you: a small, attractive attentive army, ones very own personal retinue, whose task it is to get your clothes off and get you into a seat.

Once divested of your outer garments, you are ritualistically led away into a cavernous mesmerisation, where upmarket, hip and trendy live together in perfect harmony. You mean like Sir Paul McCartney’s ‘ebony and ivory’? No, I don’t mean that at all.

In a kitchen part exposed to view, white smocked chefs are wocking it up as if there is no tomorrow, whilst waiters hither and thither fly. The voices of the seated, who are already pleasantly wining and dining, form a mood-inspiring background murmur, akin to the sound of soothing white noise blotting out the primordial row of that noisy neighbourhood dog.

If ever the Wizard of Oz had owned a palace like this, it could not have been half as entrancing.

Would we be led to the left, or would we be led to the right? On this occasion we are led to the right and given a table for two. My back is against a solid brick pillar, just the way I like it. Seats in restaurants and bars, just like friends and angels, are meant to be chosen carefully; if you don’t feel comfortable where they’ve put you, you won’t enjoy your meal; in fact, the entire evening could be ruined. If you don’t believe me, ask Wild Bill Hickock.

We had dined at Kavkaz before, and the first reason for returning was that Kavkaz serves good food at value-for-money prices, but I was also there on a mission. We have a project pending, and I could think of no better place than Kavkaz to consolidate our knowledge of shabby chic design. From my vantage point, with my back to the wall, I had a commanding view of all that I wanted to see.

Olga and Mick Hart at Kavkaz, Georgian Restaurant Kaliningrad

The place was busy this evening, the only available seats were on my left and these, too, would be taken later. A squadron of waiters and waitresses, dressed in their becoming livery of tan trousers and matching waistcoats, flitted swiftly from table to table. The restaurant is so vast that every waiter is wired. Ah, the wonders of the electronic age. Wherever would we be without a plug stuck in our ear or a smartphone in our hands!

The buzz it was a happy one. It had that unmistakeable festive feel that Christmas brings to the better world of Christendom. Long may it prevail. An atmosphere like this, which is to say comfortable, requires a specific beer, and the atmosphere this evening seemed to be calling out for Maisel’s Weisse, but first the waiter brought to our table a complementary carafe of water (you have to drink it sometimes) infused with a sliver of cucumber. That sure was a new one on me!

The beer was fast on its heels, and not long after along came our meals. The restaurant may have been busy, but the service as always was slick and swift.

At half time, who should arrive but Father Frost and his daughter. Shimmering silver and white, they passed from table to table, with a Ho! Ho! Ho! and a Snovam Gordam (Happy New Year), handing out small presents to children, who were wreathed in smiles, with sparkling eyes and amazed and enthralled expressions. Call him Father Frost, Father Christmas, Santa Claus, call him what you will, it’s a non-negotiable fact that the world needs a lot more of him.

To even up the score, there was another, a dark and mysterious figure, wandering amongst us, looking as if he had just stepped off a Roger Corman film set. This sinister apparition, a man we must presume, or something of mortal substance, was dressed from head to toe in black. The hood, or cowl, that he was wearing, completely obscured his face, turning his eyes and thus his soul invisible. If one was to level one’s own eyes to a point at which they strained, one could just make out whatever it was inhabiting concealment, peering out from behind an obfuscating curtain of gauze, an almost impenetrable barrier, which must have dramatically altered the hidden incumbent’s perception of anything outside his inside world.

Hobgoblin and veiled figure, New Year's Eve, Kaliningrad

Perched upon his shoulder, above a hooked, outstretched and angled arm, was an ugly looking so-and-so, which, every now and again, according to its will, would home in on a table of quietly seated innocent folk and invade their zone of comfort. Who was this mysterious stranger? And what was his purpose here, tonight?

Nobody seemed unduly perturbed by the presence of this denizen duo. In fact, wherever the two would wend, which was everywhere, they seemed to raise a smile if not a laugh. But the black veil and swooping creature had an entirely different effect on me. Give me Father Frost and his delightful daughter any day of the week, rather than this Soros hobgoblin and his blighted bedighted funereal future. But I ask you to forgive me. My imagination has a reputation for being overly sensitive and has been known to play tricks before. And yet I did have an auntie called Clair Voyant, and my uncle was blessed with crystal balls … It was enough to make me want to order, in fact I felt I had to order, another pint of Maisel’s Weisse.

Festive season mythology at work in Kaliningrad

When eventually ~ eventually being of no greater duration than possibly two minutes, although to hypersensitive senses it seemed there was nowhere he could not be for any length of unspecified time ~ this ominous be-gauzed spectre of inauspicious things to come, and his malevolent menacing mate, left the spot where they had been preying, my clarity was restored.

I took a gulp of Maisel’s Weisse ~ what nectar! ~ and afforded myself the luxury of staring into the middle distance, freely.

Mirror Mirror on the wall do you tell the truth at all?

Between the wall and the open room, an altitudinous wooden screen of shelving had, in the imaginative Kavkaz manner and by considered intersection, created a narrow corridor, leading away from the dining area down to the gents’ and ladies’ loos. A very important direction.

At the end of this long and narrow walkway, mistaken by some for a models’ catwalk, stands a large, tall, gilt-framed mirror. People walking towards it react to its presence in different ways: some gaze directly into it, in the hope of receiving their own approval; others seem to fall shy of it, briefly looking then looking away, but often casting a sideways glance before they turn the corner, as if by failing to do so, they might lose sight of their very existence; and still others stop in front of it, forced to a halt by their own adoration.

One young lady was so enthralled by whoever it was she wanted to be, whatever it was she wanted to see, that she walked that way several times and even, on one occasion, brought her friends to look in the mirror with her. I wondered what it was that each of them could see and if they saw the same as one another. What was that mirror showing them? Was it their present, their past or their future? And would that mirror still be there, say in 50 years from now, should they ever return to Kavkaz, which reflection would they see: the one they had left behind today or the one which they would bring with them?

The time would come this evening when I would have to walk that way myself, and that time inevitably came halfway through my second pint.

What, I thought, was this mirror up to, so bold, so brash, so strategically placed that in any age more primitive it could have been mistaken for a portal to your soul. In Kavkaz, as in life, this is a mirror you cannot avoid. When you have to go, you have to go. But when it was my turn, I wilfully looked away, not completely sure, however, who or what the mirror had captured, or if that something had looked like me had it been grinning as it went past? Mirrors can be funny things. Things funny be can mirrors. Is it little wonder that vampires seldom use them?

Georgian Restaurant Kaliningrad

Back safely at our table the spirit of Christmas welcomed me in the form of a Georgian special. I found a glass of chacha, a Georgian pomace brandy, sitting next to my pint. I had not yet had the pleasure of sampling such a rare intoxicant and was surprised, as much as a vegetarian can be, that I took to it like a hungry shark in a swimming pool, so much so in fact that I had to have another. The fermentation was truly delicious, but I threw myself a lifebelt after the second glass for fear of becoming a goldfish in my reckless Christmas ocean. Sam Cooke knew a lady who couldn’t do the cha cha cha, but that was his problem, not mine. My problem was that I could, but knowing I could, I shouldn’t.

The one thing that I should be frightened of, but, alas, forsooth, am not, is turning into a pumpkin. It is hard to get me home once I have found a hospitable place. But all good things, as we are told, and told, and told, and told … must, and do, come to an end, even a night at Kavkaz.

Leaving the Kavkaz is never easy, particularly when it is still in motion and more so particularly at this time of year. Yet, like all the best and worst of villains swear when their time is up, “You haven’t seen the last of me! I vow I shall return!”, the same was singing in my ear.

And that’s the way it always is, and that’s the way it should be, whenever you go to Kavkaz.

Happy New Year!

Also go to: Tolstoy Art Cafe

Pivovar Restaurant Brewery Kaliningrad

British pub-like brew bar and restaurant

27 December 2024 ~ Pivovar Restaurant Brewery Kaliningrad

Shame on me! It was one of my brothers who first discovered the Pivovar Restaurant Brewery, ‘hidden away’, he said, close to the foundations of a Kaliningrad Spar. That’s Spar as in supermarket not spa as in Roman baths.

He was right in the first place, the location is unusual, or so it seems to us Brits, but not in the second: A large, illuminated logo-branded sign strapped atop a cylindrical portico, all glass and rather tall, facing a busy road that leads to Kaliningrad’s city centre can hardly relate to something said to be ‘hidden away’. But, if that is so, how come I missed it?

The obvious answer is that, unlike my brother, my whole life does not revolve around hunting out bars and beer (polite cough).

I thanked him for letting me know and assured him that when I could find the time I’d stroll along and check out this bar. Then away he went, and off I rushed.

Pivovar Restaurant Brewery Kaliningrad

Since that pioneering visit, I have returned to the bar under the Spar on three or four occasions, which, given the calibre of the establishment, may not nearly be enough.

My recent tarriance at the Pivovar Restaurant Brewery found it, I am pleased to say, much the same as it was on previous visits. We like things to stay the same, don’t we. How does it go? “If it ‘aint broke, don’t fix it.”

I stood outside for a moment and allowed myself the luxury of admiring the bar’s grand portico, until someone, no doubt wondering what had so arrested me, asked if I needed help. This was really nice of them, but having been beyond help for more years than I care to remember, I politely replied, “It’s much too late,” thanked them for their indulgence, then did all that I could to remove myself before someone else came along and mistook me for Colin Conspicuous.

In any event, there’s only so much portico admiring that one can reasonably do when there are better things to be doing, and beer is one of those better things. The next step was to literally pass through the portico. This is what I did.

The grand portico of the bar below the Spar leads to expectations that bad management could easily upend. Thankfully, no such failure is engendered. After the grand portico comes a grand staircase, which leads to a grand lower floor and to a lady behind a cloakroom counter.

The lights in the entrance hall are dim, mindfully so, and together with the woodwork, of which there is plenty, has a significant impact on first impressions. Would this bar be in England, the dark varnish on the doors, panelling and staircase balusters would peg its origin to the 1980s, but as cultural influences take time to travel, my hunch is that the premises date to the mid-2010s.

The pre-bar experience, in spite of the paintwork’s distressed character, which could be actual or artificial, has rather stately and formal overtones, which carry over into the bar itself. And what a bar it is. Vast is a word that springs to mind: JD Wetherspoon vast.

Size isn’t everything, or so we are led to believe, and this is perfectly true if it fails to work, but in this establishment it does work. In fact, it works rather well, even better than most.

The ratio of seating to open space is well balanced, not at all cramped, packed or crowded. A full complement of seating types is offered, including cubicle, booth, banquet, open table and bar stools. I could run around a place like this all night trying different seats, with a different beer on a different table whilst availing myself of a different perspective. But, of course, I wouldn’t do that, because I look silly enough. Like most of us who are creatures of habit, I usually make for the self-same seat that I have occupied on previous occasions, or find a seat as near as dammit, and these are those that have snob-screened partitions to the left of the entrance facing the bar.

There was one occasion, completely out of character, when feeling oddly adventurous, I went and broke the mold. That’s not quite the same as breaking one’s beer glass, which always is and always has been a tragedy, it’s simply an introduction to saying that I found myself sitting pretty, if ever an idiom of this kind could be used to describe one such as I, elevated high and mighty upon the luxurious centrepiece seating, my foam-frothing formidable pint clasped firmly in my hand, the foam-padded faux-leather ochre beneath my pampered bum, which was, of course, in trousers. This, however, was a one-off move. I suppose I like my regular seat as it looks out over the bar, a regular bar at that, with beer pumps thrusting from it and immediately behind it well-stocked spirit shelves, which add to its British persona.

Bar at Pivovar Brewery Restaurant Kaliningrad

Brewing vats at Kaliningrad's Pivovar Brewery

We have already debunked the myth that Pivovar Restaurant Brewery is hidden away German-bunker style, establishing in the process that this clever bar beneath the Spar packs a surprise in size (notice how I rhymed that!). To that we can now add that there is also nothing in its name that conceals the fact that beers are brewed on the premises and that the grub it serves is rather special.

Almost without exception, internet reviews posted by former Pivovar diners are cock-a-hoop and thumbs-up good. Indeed, I myself have once or twice partaken of the victuals, and though far from being a seasoned gourmet am happy to relate that there was nothing to complain about. So, if you are one of those whose reason for eating out is to give your complaints to the chef, you will need to go elsewhere.

The same advice applies if you are longing for a pint of bad or boring beer, since the beer at Pivovar Restaurant Brewery is consistently applaudable, as much for its quality as it is for variety.

The beer range, though not, for example, as breathtaking as the Yeltsin’s revolving stock, is, nevertheless, not to be sneezed at, with or without your old plandemic mask. Most certainly you will find that in downing one of Pivovar’s beers you will want to sink another, maybe more.

On the occasion of my first visit to Pivovar Restaurant Brewery, I wondered why the waitress had handed me the local newspaper. Did she want me to read the article on the art of looking not quite so obviously English? It was only when I spotted the bar’s distinctive beer vat logo centred within the paper’s masthead that the rouble finally dropped: this was no local rag, it was, in fact, the menu.

I cannot recall in my long and distinguished pub-frequenting career ever coming across something of this nature. It is a simple but effective touch, as the branding remains in your mind. “It’s that bar. You know the one; the big place under the Spar. The one that has menus that look like newspapers.”

Pivovar Restaurant Brewery Kaliningrad's newspaper-style menu

a pint of delicious beer on Pivovar bar's menu

There are restaurants and bars in Kaliningrad whose menus are printed in Russian and English. I suspect that this was done to coincide with the World Cup tournaments which Kaliningrad hosted in 2018. Unfortunately, Pivovar Restaurant Brewery did not follow this trend, and since the world we live in today is a lot different than the one we inhabited yesterday, insofar as English-speaking folk are thinner on the ground, the bar’s management must sigh with relief that they saved themselves the extra expense. However, that having been duly noted, I was there on the premises, all alone in the world of written Russian, squinting through my Franklin Splits in an effort to determine which one of their excellent beers they could tempt me with today.

Luckily for me, language has never been a barrier, at least not where beer is concerned, although it doesn’t hurt at all to have a decent memory. I went for a deep, dark beer that cost me 300 roubles. This was not the first time that I had drunk this beer at Pivovar Restaurant; thus, cynics might postulate that working from memory negated the need for further squinting, they might also insinuate that as the beers on the menu’s consecutive pages were rather more expensive than the one I had chosen on the front page, I had gone for the cheapest option.

I was far too preoccupied with practising my reading skills to give a definite account of what it was the waitress said to her colleagues after I had ordered. For all I know, she could have said, “Yes, it’s him, alright, that same old tight-arsed Englishman, disguised by beard as Father Frost. He always goes for the cheapest beers!”

“Happy Cheap Year and down the hatch!”

Beer and beards — they were made for each other.

Foaming around the mouth hair, I did not on this occasion partake of the bar’s cuisine. I had a thousand roubles in my pocket and a calculation in my mind that should I order another beer, I would be left with enough nalichka for a loaf of bread and a tin of baked beans from the Spar above the bar.

Pivovar Restaurant Brewery Kaliningrad

On the evening that I was at Pivovar’s, I was flying solo, so all I needed was a table, a chair, and, of course, a glass of beer. However, the size of the restaurant/brewery and its range of food and beer make it the perfect fit for business lunches and birthday parties. Birthday parties are a Pivovar speciality and are catered for at a 10% discount, whilst business lunches are bookable throughout the working week, from Monday to Friday inclusive, between 12 noon and 4pm.

Another Pivovar humdinger is its Beer to Go service. Carry-outs can be purchased in 1 litre or in convenient 1.5 litre containers at a cost of 320 and 480 roubles respectively. Alternatively, food and beer combinations can be collected in person or delivered to your door (web-page link here).

And here you will find a link to the brewery’s beer selection.

It would be completely out of character if I failed to mention how much I appreciated the retro signs, wall mirrors and other memorabilia which light up the stairwell and entrance hall to the Pivovar Restaurant Brewery. Not only do we like things to stay the same as they were, as when they do they remain the same as they are, but we also like all things retro. Moreover, we like good beer, which is why we like to like Pivovar Restaurant Brewery.

The main thing

Pivovar Restaurant Brewery
137b Alexander Nevsky St, Kaliningrad, 236008
Tel: +8 (4012) 585-999
Website: https://www.kld-pivovar.ru/

Opening times
Sun to Thu: 12 noon to 11pm
Fri to Sat: 12 noon to 12 midnight

Surviving New Year’s Eve: If I can so can you

Would you Adam and New Year’s Eve it!

12 December 2024 ~ Surviving New Year’s Eve: If I can so can you

Oh no, it’s that time of year again: what are we going to do at Christmas and where are we going to go on New Year’s eve?

I’ve heard tell that some party people are so far ahead of those like me who are not that they begin planning how they will spend their Christmas and New Year almost before the last one is over. I don’t disbelieve it. Do you know that there are people who actually plan their summer holidays!

Retrospectively> How to deal with a vaccinated liberal family member at Christmas

Yesterday, when I was young, planning Christmas was not an issue. It was taken for granted that Christmas Day, and often Boxing Day, would be spent at home with the family. Thereafter, I would traditionally mosey along to catch up with my friends in Rushden, Northants, for some inter-New Year’s pubbing.

I enjoyed those family Christmases. Ours was quite a large family, which permitted us to indulge in a circuit of Christmas parties held consecutively at the homes of aunties and uncles.

New Year, however, was a different basket of presents altogether. Had I have owned a kilt, a set of bagpipes and a large hairy sporran, then I might have seen in the New Year in style ~ if you can call such fetishes that ~ but within my family circle Christmas was the favourite. New Year’s either trailed in second or sometimes never ran.

Looking back, it would not be too far-fetched to say that I have endured more disastrous, that is to say anticlimactic, New Year’s Eves than I have experienced successful ones.

I recall one New Year’s Eve, when I lived in London, trying to evade the issue of where to be doing what at midnight by drinking with friends during the day and then, come 9pm, scooting off home double quick and diving under the bed sheets.

Hah, fooled it this year! Problem was that I had forgotten to tell the rest of the world to do likewise. On the stroke of midnight all hell let loose. Fireworks flashed and blasted, the club up the road cranked out music at fever pitch, there was merriment in the street ~ blast it! ~ with people crying ‘Happy New Year’ and mawkish peels of auld lang syne came kilting through the letterbox.

Nearly midnight. A clock on New Year's Eve

I never got back to sleep that night, and my New Year’s day was like everyone else’s: faded, jaded and tired. I never went to the party, but I reaped the rewards of it second hand.

Surviving New Year’s Eve

Deriving what your average extrovert might see as a perverse pleasure in being on my lonesome whilst everyone around me obeys the 11^th Commandment, “Thou shalt party”, appears to be a forte of mine.

For example, I am probably one of the very few people, if not the only person, to have surprised himself and the organisers by not turning up to a surprise 21^st birthday party which was in fact his own. Now let that be a lesson to me!

One year’s New Year’s Eve was deliciously more disastrous than even the best of the worst. I had been left on my own in Rushden ~ What a place to be left on your own! What a place to be with someone! (Dear old Rushden, I love you really …). My wife, having received an invitation to spend New Year’s Eve in Paris, snook off with my blessing. And that was a lesson for her.

For some reason, an idealised one I suspect, she seemed to harbour the strange misconception that the Paris she was going to would be the Paris of the 1920s and 30s, which sadly it is not. I blame Humphrey Bogart and his Casablanca’s “We’ll always have Paris …”, when it is evident we wont and obvious we don’t. It’s like singing anachronistically, “There’ll always be an England …” when there isn’t anymore and will never be again.

My good lady wife returned from her New Year’s jaunt jaundiced by the revelation that Paris no longer possessed the style and panache of its glory years but resembled in parts a ghetto from some dark subcontinent back of beyond; and talk about aggressive begging, it was worse than the streets of Kolkata!

Whilst she had been busy upending a dream, I was sitting alone in the office of our antiques emporium, watching Christmas unfold through the lens of the CCTV camera. Almost every house along the street had friends or relatives calling, all of whom were in party mood. For me, with a Christmas dinner of beans on toast, listening to the festive strains of Leonard Cohen’s Christmas Hits, it felt as though the world was having a party to which my invitation had arrived too late. Yes, that must be the answer; my invitation was still in the post.

I am sure that anyone normal would have been distressed by this exclusion, but somehow it seemed a perfect fit for my innate sense of Gothic melancholy, and I have to admit, hand on heart, that I have never enjoyed a Christmas like it. The only way to have gone one better would have been to put the cat out.

Surviving New Year’s Eve

You’ve probably guessed by now that I am not the world’s most enthusiastic party goer. I don’t go a bundle on them, and I care for crowds even less. This could explain why during the 20 years I lived in London, I never attended the fireworks display held in the capital on New Year’s Eve and have no inclination still to this day to patronise large-scale events whatever they are and wherever they may be.

New Year’s Eve at a pub, waking up the following morning aching from head to toe, having slept it off in the back of a car, now that would be a New Year’s to remember. If only I could remember. I must have the details written down somewhere.

Retrospectively> Why Happy New Year?

There was one year in London when the New Year’s festivities ended up in a pub brawl worthy of John Wayne. It was not my fault, I hasten to add, I was an innocent bystander, but I was carted away with the rest of them and with them sat out the early hours of a hazy New Year’s Day down at the local cop shop. As luck would have it, however, the venue we were taken to happened to be in Bethnal Green, where I knew of several pubs. So, after they’d booted us out with a caution, it was the hair of the East London dog for us, even though the rest of the dog was rather bruised and battered.

Mick Hart New Year party, Russia, 2000/2001. Surviving New Year’s Eve.

^: My first New Year in Kaliningrad, 31 December 2000: an introduction to party games

In Russia, New Year’s Eve is the big one, the ultimate annual celebration and most eagerly awaited public holiday. At this time of year, every year, Russians push the boat out, and they manage to do it impressively, even without a kilt. (“Excuse me, is it true that you don’t wear swimming trunks under your kilts?” “Not to the office, no. But we do when pushing the boat out.”)

One thing I wasn’t prepared for at Russian New Year’s parties was the obligatory playing of games. Playing games, not one but many, is an integral, unavoidable part not only of Russian New Year’s parties but any Russian party. I couldn’t abide them at first, but twenty-four years on, I seem to have acquired a satisfactory adaptive immunity to the professional and self-appointed maestros who it seems will stop at nothing to get you up on your feet and jump you around the room. With irrepressible party spirit, they hoik you onto the dance floor, where they make you perform embarrassing feats or assign a comedic role to you in an improvised mini-drama.

It cannot be said that these masters of ceremonies, self-styled or otherwise, are not good at what they do. They create a tempo, maintain engagement and prevent the party from flagging, but turbo-charged with extroversion and, in professional cases, the additional lure of fees, they give no concessions and take no prisoners. Woe betide the shrinking violet, the carefully cosseting introvert, the poor self-conscious soul should they fall into the sphere of influence controlled by these unrelenting cheerleaders.

Retrospectively> New Year’s Eve at the Hotel Russ, Svetlogorsk

I have heard it said about people, and I am sure that you have too, that they can adapt to anything in the fullness of time. I am not so sure about that, but a word in your shell-like if you please on the subject of party games. You have doubtlessly heard that a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down, well, three or four shots of vodka does for party games what sugar does for medicine. Neck two or three at the start of the party and before the evening is out, your chaperone Self-Consciousness will have left you to your own devices and, mark my words and make no mistake, you will be up their strutting your stuff with the rest and the best of the extroverts. By the end of the evening, you might even believe that you have been speaking Russian fluently and even if you haven’t, nobody will have noticed. That’s the beauty of sugar. Trust me! Your razzling-dazzling party-game prowess will have knocked them all for six.

^: Mick Hart finding rhythm at a Russian party with the help of vodka and a fancy hat

This time last year I had no need to prep myself on vodka or brush up on my party games act, I was on my own again. (It can be addictive.) This bothered me not a jot. I togged myself up and tootled off to Kaliningrad city centre. The proposition was to have one or two libations in town, have a nightcap on my return, shout Happy New Year to myself too early, as my watch is always wrong, and then immediately hop into bed. Unfortunately, however, it didn’t happen that way. Forgetting that New Year’s eve is Russia’s most important holiday, no allowances had been made for every bar and restaurant being fully booked. Beer and vodka everywhere and not a drop to drink. Luckily for me, our neighbours came to the rescue, as they have before on New Year’s Eve. They invited me to join them, and I spent a pleasant evening in their company.

Not only did they save me from the Billy No Mates stigma, sitting alone on New Year’s Eve, but they also gave me access to a telly, something we don’t have, and whilst I am more than happy to do without a telly for 364 days of the year, on the 365th a telly comes in handy.

I am not keen on the stage-crafted jollity, the forced frivolity and razzamatazz of celeb-laden New Year’s Eve shows, but my enduring fascination with our allotted place in the slipstream of time magnetises my interest in counting down the seconds to midnight, besides which I have a thing for the Russian national anthem and the New Year’s presidential address.

Mick Hart surviving New Year's Eve. Thankfully the neighbour's invited him to spend New Year's with them.

^: Midnight New Year’s Eve, Kaliningrad

During the period when we owned and ran our UK antique emporium, we held a succession of New Year’s parties in the adjoining barns at the back of the building. They were, of course, not my idea, but I must confess, with barely disguised astonishment, that most went off successfully, with the unforgettable exception of one, when we all came down with the flu. A quick recovery was necessary, as racked in the room where the party never took place, perched a 72-pint barrel of ale with a shelf life of five days. Downing it before the deadline was not an easy task, but the commitment and enthusiasm with which we went about it was a remarkable example of collaboration at its best. We may have missed New Year’s Eve but only to make it last for a week rather than one evening. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill.

Surviving New Year’s Eve

These back-of-the-building New Year’s parties were always much of a stamina tester, since given our Russian connections, respect for our Russian guests and a sentimental attachment to Kaliningrad, first we would celebrate Moscow’s New Year, an hour later Kaliningrad’s and finally at midnight GMT, we would raise a glass (or several) to our own UK New Year.

We didn’t have a TV, but with the aid of a projector and a slice of white brick wall, we would screen recorded videos of a patriotic nature, belting out Russia’s National Anthem to coincide with two Russian New Year’s and ‘God Save the Queen’, the Royal Salute, on the stroke of UK’s midnight ~ or sometimes at 30 seconds to midnight or 30 seconds past, as nobody had the exact right time; in the depths of our party bunker nobody’s smartphone worked. These sequential celebrations led to three volleys of popping champagne corks in as many hours. We even played some Russian games and added a few of our own. Who said that it couldn’t be done! And me not a party animal!

Holding these parties at the back of the shop from which we sold vintage clothes meant we were never short of a prop or two, so should someone have the secret desire to see New Year in as Lenin, or transform himself into Winston Churchill, the fulfilment of their fantasies was not beyond their grasp.

A 1920s' themed New Year's Eve party at Station109 Vintage

^: 1920s’ New Year’s Eve party in the back room of the antiques/vintage emporium

These parties would typically stretch into the wee kiltish hours, so that the full effect of the hangover would not be felt until late afternoon, the antidote for which was either to wend one’s weary way to the pub or sit at home feeling dreadful, reciting next year’s resolution, ‘never, ever again!’

Older now and wiser, such casting caution to the wind is over. No more shall I encounter the sort of reckless New Year’s Eves outlined in this post and certainly not the kind that occurred in 2002, when we arranged to meet Victor Ryabinin after a New Year’s party.

Arriving at 1am, we left Victor’s Kaliningrad art studio at 9 o’clock in the morning, having conversed and drunk through the twilight hours. The snow was thick underfoot and a blizzard up and blowing, and yet in spite of the hour and all we had drunk the memory of that morning trudging back to our flat is as clear as if it had happened yesterday. I can see the snow and I can see my boots mechanically tromping up and down, but only through one eye. I had one eye open, and one eye shut. Autopilot is not recommended, but it got me back safely that morning.

When all is said and done, surviving New Year’s Eve is small potatoes. It is the 365 days that follow which pose the greater challenge. The big issue is not what are you going to do on New Year’s Eve, but how are you going to spend the rest of the year. What are you going to do with it? What is it going to do with you? Perhaps if you set your mind on making New Year’s Eve not quite so happy as you have in the past, the year to come may be brilliant. We’ve had a lot of practice, but will we ever get it right? In the last analysis, does it matter? The countdown has begun: 2024 is quickly slipping away from us.

Whatever you do, Good Luck!

Below: The ghosts of New Years’ past. Hotel Russ, Svetlogorsk,
since demolished …

The ghost of New Year's past. The Hotel Russ, Svetlogorsk, now demolished

Russia Day in Kaliningrad Honours Past and Present

Commemorate and Celebrate

4 December 2024 ~ Russia Day in Kaliningrad Honours Past and Present

RUSSIA DAY has been celebrated annually on 12 June since 1992. It is the national holiday of the Russian Federation, originally and officially known as the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), but that was a bit of a mouthful, even for Russians, so mercifully it was changed in 1998, so that even I can say it.

The idea that the Russian calendar is dominated by celebrations is not entirely misleading if you factor in everything from music, film, theatre, food, famous people to winter. However, Russia has no more public holidays than most other countries ~ eight, I believe.

Just like Bank Holidays in the UK, most public offices and schools are closed on 12^th June. It’s a national day off, with events taking place throughout the country.

It’s also a chance for Russians to revisit, remind themselves of and celebrate all things Russian.

For some people, older people, those who were brought up in the USSR, the day has different significances. For those who bemoan the loss of the Soviet Union, it is a day of fond, if not sad, remembrance; for those who answer ‘No’ to my question, “Do you miss the Soviet Union?”, it is a day to celebrate pre-Soviet history, the Russia of the here and now and/or the Russia of the future.

Without mastery of the crystal ball to preview destiny, at least two of these time periods coalesced in Kaliningrad’s 2024 Russian Day festival. Held in the attractive grass and meandering paved precincts bordering Königsberg’s Upper Pond, Russian culture and its past were brought evocatively to life in colourful costumed pageants, tableau vivant and displays of living history. Craft stalls of a multifarious nature plied their trade in traditional hand-made Russian goods, augmented by the up to date and novel to attract the eyes of children and appeal to less retrospective types.

Also at hand was costume and fine jewellery, which, If you failed to keep your navigational wits about you, could eventually end up on the hands, around the wrists and upon the neck of your wife or girlfriend.

“Look, over there! [away from the jewellery stalls]. There’s a very interesting, er, what do you call it, thingymajig.”

June, like most other months of the year, can be temperamental (I knew a girl called June once. Heaven knows why they christened her that, they would better have called her December.), but I am pleased to say that on the twelth day of this June, the clouds rolled back in the heavens, the sun came out to join us and Russia Day in Kaliningrad was a gala day to remember.

The English are told to celebrate everybody else’s culture (hint almost everybody else’s!)
Unfortunately, the English, what’s left of us, have no such state-ordained or government-supported equivalent to Russia Day; in fact, quite the opposite. We are encouraged to celebrate Black History Month. (I’m sure they would like to extend this to Black History 12 months, which they are doing anyway via the TV commercials.) Headlines in the liberal press exhort us to learn about everyone else, all except ourselves: “What you should know about Ramadan and Eid” “What you should know about Diwali” and “What you shouldn’t know about any of your own Christian festivals, coz it don’t matter!”

St Patrick’s Day is a public holiday for the Irish, but St George’s Day (the Patron Saint of England) is hardly recognised anymore and deliberately suppressed by the left, who are afraid that it could remind the English of their ancestral history, and thus consolidate their cultural identity, which they, the left, have for some time now been working hard to eradicate.

One black activist operating in the UK has put it on record that in his opinion the English do not deserve a day off to celebrate its culture. I should imagine that the English feel that they don’t deserve him.

Hopefully, Farage and Reform will change all that in the very near future! 👍

>>> Toast Making in Russia, an Important Tradition

>>> Zelenogradsk’s Christmas Decorations Win First Prize

>>> Internation Women’s Day Kaliningrad

>>> Russia pays tribute to its men

Croissant Café Kaliningrad it tastes as good as it looks

Just a very nice place to eat, drink and relax in

30 November 2024 ~ Croissant Café Kaliningrad it tastes as good as it looks

Never let it be said, and it seldom is not, that an exorbitant number of my posts have a disproportionate beer focus. I like a drink, and I am partial to the odd atmospheric pub/bar, but I am just as at home ~ well, nearly just as at home ~ in a good restaurant or café, and whilst I feel no need to prove the point, I will let you into the secret of one of my favourite Kaliningrad cafés: Croissant.

Croissant Café Kaliningrad

Croissant Café resides on Alexandra Nevskogo Street, which, in my opinion is an excellent street. Among its many other delights and facilities, there is the Tourist Hotel, a well-stocked Spa supermarket, the legendary Cultura Bottle Shop, a shop selling all kinds of inexpensive household products, including socks, pants, slippers and woolly hats, a special bread kiosk, an arty farty barbers, in fact, everything needed for daily sustenance.

Croissant Café is, of course, an all-year-round establishment, but I am particularly drawn to it in the winter months. I like the way on a cold, damp, frosty or a snow-settled day, the light ~ soft, warm and inviting ~ frames its windows in a cosy glow and then, stealing out into the street, tugs at your lapels. If you feel like a moth drawn to a flame, don’t worry. For a café serving quality food, the prices are quite reasonable. You can open your wallet, and you won’t get burnt.

Croissant Café likens itself in atmosphere and fare to the best in French tradition. It proudly emulates the pastry shops and bakeries from which French gastronomy gets its good name. Certainly, its bread selection, which comes in all shapes and sizes, has enough French sticks and crispy baguettes bristling from its wicker baskets to conjure up boulangerie.

Croissant Café Kaliningrad display counter

Its website speaks in mouthwatering terms of all-day breakfasts and exclusive desserts, and its confidence in its ‘confectionary showcase’ allows it to mention by name its celebrated pastry chef Alexander Dianov.

In an illuminated glass display unit below the bread-laden shelves, a sumptuous banquet of choice awaits for those who have a sweet tooth. There are cakes, tarts, tempting delicacies covered in rich dark chocolate, an enticing array of exciting desserts and countless peerless pastries.

Excuse me, why do they call it Croissant Café?

Even though Croissant Café places great store on its sweet’s selection, and not without good reason, its range of savoury dishes are no less gastronomically adventurous or relegated by aesthetic indifference.

Every picture tells a story, and the café’s glossy booklet-style menus capture every dish using full-colour high-res photographs accompanied by descriptive profiles. The only flaw in the café’s menu, which in fairness is an oversight endemic in Kaliningrad, is that it fails in its savoury dishes to cater sufficiently for vegetarians, a funny lot, I know, among whose number I am one, but a consumer group all the same growing exponentially whose converts await entrepreneurs who can convert their conversion into roubles.

I am frankly quite surprised that no one in Russia’s hospitality industry has identified the vast potential lurking in this untapped resource, brought it on, encouraged it and mined it for all it is worth.

Croissant Café (Kruassan-Kafe) Kaliningrad
There are a number of Croissant Cafés centred in and around Kaliningrad each proudly purveying a tempting range of high quality pastry and confectionary products and unique recipe freshly baked breads. Aromatic coffees and a wide selection of teas, plus hot beverages of an avant garde nature complement the café’s cuisine, or, should you wish to pamper the palate further, you could always go for one of the wines from the café’s European selection.

Other cafés in the Croissant Café family in and around Kaliningrad
пл. Победы, 4
ул. Багратиона, 87
Ленинский пр. 67
пр. Мира, 84
пр. Мира, 23
Zelenogradsk, Lenin St, 3
Светлогорск, ул. Ленина 33

On a menu so extensive that it could have been the work of Tolstoy, I could only find three meat-free meals, and when I went to place an order, two of these I discovered though pictorially on the menu were not really on the menu at all.

Croissant Café Kaliningrad

The advantage of being a simple-food person is that disappointments like these have no earth-shattering consequences, and I was not so very much perturbed by the only option left to me, which was avocado salad. This relatively humble offering, like every other Croissant Café meal, could not be better presented, and with an appetising salad dressing and an assortment of tasty breads, each one freshly baked, I was not unhappy with my lot.

As with its savoury dishes and sweets, the café does not stint on its coffee and tea varieties, which are almost more diverse than the migrant-invaded West. It also caters for those whose approach to beverages is more intrepid, who are open to trying something new, something enticingly different, something overtly exotic.

Excuse me, why do they call it Croissant Café?

Contrary to Western media, Russia is rather sweet (see that picture below). I, on the other hand, am not a sweet man (Sorry, what was that you said? You’ve worked it out already.). However, providing the quality and price is right, I have been known to make exceptions, and nowhere am I more inclined to make exceptions of this kind than when dining at Croissant Café.

Cafés can be many things, for example cafés exist in England that bear more than a passing resemblance to the down-at-heel soup kitchens in Chicago’s prohibition era (I kinda like these too!). Croissant, on the other hand, is the very Ritz of cafés. The food is consistently good and presented with such an artistic flair that it would not look exceptionally out of place displayed at the London Tate.

The service, on my most recent visit and on previous occasions, was and has been commendable, scoring top marks for efficiency and ~ now read this café owners and read it in slow motion, since loyal patronage depends on it~ a gold medallion for friendliness. I am not, as some would appear to be, in the habit of frequenting cafés to lord it over the waiters and waitresses. Empathy is good for digestion, and Croissant Café’s friendly staff are a credit to the café’s appeal and to its overall experience.

Now look here and for the last time! Why do they call it Croissant Café?

Because the croissants at Croissant Café are the real, the absolute deal. They are freshly prepared, baked and produced in a seductive variety of flavours and fillings.

People come from near and far to sample and savour the pastries from which Croissant Café takes its name.

Would you care for a tip? Whilst the chocolate croissants should not be passed over, the marzipan ones are marvellous!

The main thing

Croissant Café (Kruassan-Kafe)
Ulitsa Aleksandra Nevskogo, 24-30, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, 236006

Tel: 8 (401) 230-30-40

Opening times:
Monday to Friday 8am to 9pm
Saturday & Sunday 9am to 9pm

Website: Круассан-кафе

Baltika 8 Wheat Beer in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

23 November 2024 ~ Baltika 8 Wheat Beer in Kaliningrad

Article 26: Baltika 8 Wheat Beer

A wheat beer is a wheat beer is a wheat beer. That’s that then! No, not quite. This particular wheat beer, the one I am reviewing at the moment, comes in a nice waisted bottle, with a gold brand-named collar, an embossed medallion and a gold-banded label.

It’s Baltika 8.

It’s billed as wheat beer, smells like wheat beer and has a wheat-beer taste ~ you can’t go wrong with wheat beer.

The first sip is, now, let me see, wheaty ~ as it should be, since the beer is brewed from wheat. The bottle does have ‘Wheat Beer’ written on it, and it also says Baltika 8. I wondered why the ‘8’? Was it because it was brewed from 8 different kinds of wheat? That it took 8 brewers to make it? 8 weeks to brew it? Does 8 pints make you really drunk? Is the 8 supposed to rhyme with something like ‘gate’? ie ‘After 8 pints of Baltika 8, I had considerable difficulty closing the gate’, or ‘8 pints of Baltika 8, left him in a right old state’’.

What the 8 might stand for is 8mm of head, which dissipates in less than 8 seconds, but hey! It’s wheat beer and that’s what wheat beer does!

PS: I’ve been told not to be so stupid. Baltika 8 contains eight nuances of taste.

Normally, wheat beer is good and cloudy but, in Baltika 8’s case it’s good and cloudy, too. The opaqueness of it let’s you in on the secret that the brew is unfiltered, signalling that the beer is rich in protein and other biologically good-for-you substances.

Baltika 8 Wheat Beer in Kaliningrad

I know you can’t wait to say that I added the last bit as it was beginning to become more than apparent from what you’ve read so far that I cannot tell the difference between one wheat beer and the next. My sentiments with regards to this are that if I was mugged by one in London’s Brixton and they put it in a police line-up, I wouldn’t be able to tell you which one it was who did it. They’re all the same to me.

What I can say without fear of calling myself a liar is that the price of Baltika 8 is not daylight robbery, not at 85 roubles a half litre for a yummy beer made from wheat. It’s somehow pleasing to see that the price of Baltika 8 has an ‘8’ in it. (“Innit!” ~ a fan from south London)

It is difficult to say whether Baltika 8 has more wheat in it than other wheat beers and, even if it does, if someone was to place Baltika 8 Wheat Beer in a dark room with seven other wheat beers whether I would know the difference after tripping over one of them. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t know Jack from Jill. Well, you can’t these days, can you!

If I had to make a definitive statement about the quality of Baltika 8 without recourse to comparison, I would say ‘Bingo!’ ~ Baltika have got this one right! It is a good, tasty brew, with more body than Chicago during the prohibition era. What really endears me to it is that the taste lingers on. If it was a criminal record, it would certainly be a long one.

The best way to enjoy a bottle of Baltika 8 Wheat Beer is to sort the wheat from the chat.

Cheers!

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Baltika 8 Wheat Beer
Brewer: Baltika Breweries
Where it is brewed: St Petersburg, Russia
Bottle capacity: 0.5 litre
Strength: 5%
Price: It cost me about 85 roubles (0.65 pence)
Appearance: Foggy
Aroma: Wheat with subtle abstracts
Taste: Wheat
Fizz amplitude: 4/10
Label/Marketing: Gold but not too bold
Would you buy it again? No reason not to
Marks out of 10: 8

*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.

Welcome Back President Trump to the White House

It turns out that Joe was not such a bad guy after all. He served a useful purpose in keeping Donald’s seat warm for him.

7 November 2024 ~ Welcome Back President Trump to the White House

I don’t often cry Hallelujah, at least not first thing in the morning, but 6th November was an exception. The pseudo-liberal left media on both sides of the pond almost had me believing that all was lost, almost had me believing in their lies, but for all their twists and distortions they had failed to sway the U.S. election: Harris was out of the running; Trump had won the day.

Consequently, what would have been just another grey, dull, overcast morning in damp and soggy England was miraculously transformed into an overwhelming sense of jubilation. The news that barnstormer Trump had, against seemingly insurmountable odds, risen phoenix-like from the ashes of liberal machinations, overcoming conspiracy theories, court cases, investigations, two impeachments, in-party opposition and at least two assassination attempts and then gone on to win the election and make history as only the second president of the United States to serve non-consecutive terms in office is surely a sign from on high that long entrenched liberal-left hegemony can and will be defeated.

Welcome Back President Trump

There are a number of reasons why Trump romped home to victory, but the bedrock of his success is the robust stance he is taking against the greatest liberal-orchestrated evil of our time, engineered mass immigration.

This affirmation by the American people that mass immigration is fundamentally iniquitous and has to be stopped is a cue for the people of Great Britain. If you are going to do it the democratic way, then kick out the Cons and Liebour and, before it is too late, vote in Farage and Reform.

In the aftermath of Trump’s triumph, it is virtually unbelievable that the lefty media are asking questions like why and how did Trump succeed? Are they really that thick? Do they really not get it?

Only pathological liars falling victim to their own psychosis could be bewildered by Trump’s victory. They’ll be asking us to believe next that mass immigration enriches us, rather than admit that it and the wokest drivel by which it is underpinned are the greatest existential threats to Western civilisation since the invention of Tony Blair.

It is reassuring to note that recent political developments show positive indications of the routing of the left: Brexit, Nigel Farage’s accession to Parliament, Viktor Orban’s defiance of EU dictatorship, right-wing political gains in France, anti-immigration riots in the UK and now the Return of Trump.

Trump’s election, his re-election, is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular in U.S. history. That Trump has endured and prevailed against inestimably powerful and pervasive forces of hate, malignancy and corruption, restores faith like nothing else could in a democratic system which, whilst much lauded by posturing liberals, is sadly viewed throughout the world as deeply flawed and bastardised.

Now Trump is back where he should be, there may be hope for the future yet.

All our yesterdays > Is Biden their Last Straw?

Image attribution
Red carpet: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Red-carpet-vector-drawing/15058.html

Kaliningrad flea market has moved to a new location

They said it would happen, and it has

4 November 2024 ~ Kaliningrad flea market has moved to a new location

The Kaliningrad flea market that has occupied the pavement area close to the Central Market, and in more recent years spilled over onto a ribbon of disused ground bordering the moat of the Wrangel Tower, has officially moved.

For me, as I dare say for many, the relocation of this sprawling and excitingly chaotic masterpiece of antiques, collectables, curios and junk, marks the end of an era. Not that we did not know that it was coming; plans to move the market on have been in the pipeline for years. Indeed, I wrote about the proposal in a 2022 blog post: What makes Kaliningrad Flea Market a Junk Buyer’s Paradise?

Kaliningrad flea market moves to a new location

We all know that nothing stays the same forever; Königsberg can testify to that. Nevertheless, knowing that change is imminent rarely compensates when it comes to pass.

There will be some, of course, who will breath a sigh of relief that most days, but on a Saturday in particular, they will at last be able to stroll without let or hindrance along the sidewalk next to the Wrangel Tower instead of running a zigzag gauntlet through sandwiched lines of dealers’ stalls agog with curious clutter-buggers.

I, for one, however, will miss the incipient urge whenever I visit the city’s Central Market (food market) to detour to the ‘junk’ stalls to see what they have on offer that I cannot live without, such as an old tin bucket, for example.

Mick Hasrt with his tin bucket bought from Kaliningrad flea market

There have been occasions when travelling by bus on route to somewhere else that I have accidentally alighted at the flea market. Of course, I have only gone to look, not to buy. So imagine how surprised I have been on arriving home to discover that whilst I was only looking a Soviet belt, a Königsberg ashtray, a kitsch ornament and an old German helmet have somehow jumped into my shopping bag.

Kaliningrad flea market has moved

I have not yet had the chance to work out which bus route one should take to get to the market’s new location. Gaidara Street 8 is its new address; a piece of land, I am told, that lies opposite the bridge on the way to Sovetsky Prospekt.

At the time of writing (4 November 2024), the market is not yet functioning. By all accounts, the site is vast, but a great deal needs to be done to bring it up to snuff, to make it seller- and buyer-friendly. News is, however, according to the market organisers, that the site will be ready and the market up and running in a matter of days not weeks.

Now, where did I put my Kaliningrad map? What have I done with my bucket?

387 Osobaya Varka beer in Kaliningrad good or not?

Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: 387 Osobaya Varka

Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad

31 October 2024 ~ 387 Osobaya Varka beer in Kaliningrad good or not?

Have you ever wondered why Baltika Breweries number their beers instead of giving them a name, for example Russian Sausage or Yalkee Palki. I read somewhere that it is a hangback to Soviet times when everything was numbered, ie School No. 26, Bakery No. 38, Factory No. 97, but perhaps the real reason Baltika use a number instead of a name is that it is easier to recall. Also, whenever one asks for one of their numerical brands, they have first to refer to the brewery name. I mean you can hardly ask for a ‘9’, can you, without running the risk of buying a pair of 9-sized slippers, or a packet containing a German negative. Nine, I mean no; when you ask for any Baltika beer with a number instead of a name, you have to append the ‘Baltika’ first, and, from a marketing point of view, this is rather clever.

Disregarding the fact that not many people ask for bottles of beer when they take them off the shelf (No theory is perfect!), Baltika may have smugly thought that they had the numbers game sewn up … and they had, until along came this little beauty: a beer that goes by the name of 365, sorry that’s a phone number of an old flame (Old Flame Bitter! That’s a good name for a beer!) I meant to say 387.

387 Osobaya Varka beer

387 (never start a sentence with a number!). Is it a bus? Is it a car? Is it a plane? No, the answer to the riddle lies, as revealed by Svoe Mnenie Branding Agency’s comment on the website packagingoftheworld.com, that this Russian brew was not named after Tyre Repair Centre No. 387, but because of 387’s vital statistics. According to what I have read, each bottle of 387 contains three types of malt – lager, caramel and burnt; it has taken eight hours to brew; and not less than seven days of natural fermentation. Put it together and what have you got? 387. Now that’s rather clever too, is it not!

More clever is the fact that the figures ‘387’ all but completely overwhelm the label and are produced in a clear, strong, attractive typeface with closed counters, thus ensuring that the beer leaps out at you from the multiplicity of brands seeking attention on any one shelf.

The little image of the Kaluga brewery projected in a contrasting orange colour on the collar label is also a nice, effective visual touch.

Heckler: “’ere mate, did you buy this [beep] beer to look at the label or to drink the [beep]?!”

We’ll have less of that, my good man! I thought we said no liberals?

Beer review links:

[Butauty] [Kanapinis (light)] [Kanapinis (dark)]
[Keptinis Farmhouse][Bistrampolio]

When I first bought and drank this beer on 12 September 2022, it cost me 79 roubles. The average price today for a 0.45 litre bottle would appear to be around 80 to 84 roubles. Can’t complain about that.

Beer 387 Osobaya Varka, to use its full name, weighs in at 6.8 per cent. For an old Englishman like me who is used to drinking beer at strengths between 4.1 and 4.5, that’s quite a hike, but who is complaining? Live dangerously. It’s safer than walking down many a street in London once the night has mugged the day.

As always (“He’s so [beep] predictable!” It’s that [beep] heckler again!), the assessment of a good beer and, indeed a bad beer, starts with hooter appraisal. Tops away and the smell genie that pops out of the bottle is strong, sweet and barley-like, with jostling hoppy undertones. The aroma is not lost between the bottle and the glass, into which the nectar happily settles to give a good mid-amber colour and a head which is ‘now you see it and now you don’t’.

The head fizzling out faster than a TARDIS escaping from Dover [see episode 28,000 of Dr Woke ‘The Invasion of the Third Worlders’] is as significant to me as paying my TV licence. I don’t want to have to shave every time I drink a beer. I don’t get the taste and high-volume foam connection, if, indeed, there is one.

Here we have a mid-hoppy taste; a malty taste; a little bit of fruity taste; culminating in a taste that owns up to its strength. The first sip loses nothing in the making, and there is a nice balance among the flavours. The finish is a ‘back of the tongue’ gripper, and the aftertaste in no hurry to let you down and scarper.

The beer is moreish, which is good news for the brewers and also for you, providing you weren’t so daft as to only buy one bottle!

Patric McGoohan’s Prisoner said, “I am not a number, I’m a free man!”

Beer 387 is a number. It is not a free beer, but, believe you me, it’s worth every rouble.

“AB InBev Efes is currently the biggest player on the beer market in Russia”
AB InBev Efes

BOX TICKER’S CORNER
Name of Beer: 387 Osobaya Varka
Brewer: AB InBev Efes
Where it is brewed: Russia
Bottle capacity: 0.45 litre
Strength: 6.8%
Price: It cost me 79 roubles (0.63p)
Appearance: Light amber
Aroma: Barley with fruit nuances
Taste: Starts mild-hop bitter; Finishes with a bite
Fizz amplitude: 3/10
Label/Marketing: Unique
Would you buy it again? There’s no reason not to

Beer rating

About the beer: 387 Osobaya Varka:
The brewer’s website has this to say about 387 Osobaya Varka:

A brilliant beer with rich and original flavour. Caramel malt gives a rich colour, whereas brown malt adds a rye bread aftertaste. This light beer is slightly stronger than average, which makes its flavour more complex and pronounced.

Brewer’s website: https://abinbevefes.ru/

Wot other’s say [Comments on 387 Osobaya Varka from the internet, unedited]
😊Excellent beer, for lovers of strong foamy drinks, good quality, easy to drink, no alcohol aftertaste! [Comment: No idea where he got the ‘foamy’ from!]
😊Yes, I have been enjoying this beer for a long time. It goes well with pistachios. It is cold and just right in the heat. Not weak and not strong…
😑 The taste is flat a bit sweet, a bit sour with faint malty finish. Too much carbonation along with alcohol make very bad mouthfeel. Really needs some food pairing. Avoid it.
[Comment: A bit bitty. Avoid bit.]
😊I forget what it tastes like, but I know I enjoyed it!

Telegraph Restaurant Zelenogradsk Wired for Quality

Over the wire the buzz word is Telegraph

25 October 2024 ~ Telegraph Restaurant Zelenogradsk Wired for Quality

“It’s all so confusing,” so says a friend of mine and quite often. He’s a scientist, now retired, so he should know. And he’s referring to life. When I echo his sentiments, “It’s all so confusing,” he invariably replies, “It often is,” and sometimes he will say, “… but it is also often quite exciting.” Sometimes, when reflecting on life, he opines, “It don’t make sense!” And although, ‘it’s all so confusing’ and also ‘often exciting’, it actually does make sense that there are two Telegraphs: one I wrote about recently, which is in Svetlogorsk, and the other of which I am writing now, this one is in Zelenogradsk. The Telegraph in Svetlogorsk is a cafe and an art gallery, whilst the Telegraph in Zelenogradsk a restaurant.

Telegraph Restaurant Zelenogradsk front entrance

Each Telegraph has a different function, but both are eponymously named after the same function their buildings had when the world was a different place.

The Telegraph Restaurant

The Telegraph restaurant in Zelenogradsk occupies the building of the old German telegraph and post office, which was established in the coastal resort in 1896. It is located at the top end of the high street. However, as the terms ‘top end’ and ‘bottom end’ are absolutely subjective, serving no useful purpose to man or beast, let me qualify its location by adding that it lies at the end of Zelenogradsk’s high street nearest the bus and train stations and not the end where the public park and sand is.

Telegraph Restaurant Zelenogradsk

The old telegraph building is one of those solid, stalwart red-brick affairs, instantly identifiable within the Kaliningrad region as being authentically German. In the summer months, a small area is set aside on the pavement next to the building for al-fresco dining and drinking; in winter, during the festive season, this same area is requisitioned for Telegraph’s contribution to the town’s impressive transformation into an imaginatively lit and magically decorated New Year’s holiday wonderland.

Whilst it occupies the ground floor of the former telegraph office, the contemporaneous Telegraph is accessed by a flight of steps. “It don’t make sense!” “It rarely does!”, with the exception of this region, where ground floors are often elevated above the basements below them to let in light from windows at pavement level.

On entering into the stairwell, the scene is set for the Telegraph experience. The walls are bare, stripped of their plaster, exposing the brick beneath. A black facsimile telegraph pole stands in sharp relief, and further along an illusory hole containing some kind of map twinkles in the muted light from illuminated markers. This introduction tells you in no uncertain terms that the Telegraph’s interior will not be run of the mill. It prepares you for an industrialised look with novel touches of retrospective modernity in keeping with the telegraph legacy from which it takes its thematic cue.

Exposed brickwork arch in the Telegraph restaurant

The two rooms, which are actually one room joined but visually separated by a deep, broad arch, continue the bare-brick look. The ceiling has a patchy effect, as though some of the plaster has fallen off, but as none lies on the floor below, we must chalk this up to designer licence. The lightbulbs in the industrial lampshades are the visible filament kind, they compliment the shabby chic, and the untrunked cable which supplies their power openly climb the walls.

The here and now in which we live may be the ‘wireless age’, but back in the day when the Telegraph building fulfilled its original function, the term ‘hard wired’ was literal. Appropriately, therefore, no attempt has been made to conceal the wires that link the bulbs. They travel across the ceiling in an exhibition of bold impunity.

The world of wires and plugs, the working environment of yesteryear’s telegraph offices is captured in some detail in the large, framed black and white photographs arranged around the restaurant’s walls. Study these at your leisure to see just how much times have changed.

Black & White photo of old telegraph office

Switchboard operators in a busy telegraph office

The theme of the mechanical age continues in the restaurant’s choice of tables. Old treadle sewing machines dating in manufacture and use from the 19^th to mid-20^th centuries make attractive tables once the machines have been removed.

The leading manufacturer of hand-operated and treadle machines was a company known as Singer, who suspended the Singer name in the mid-section of a wrought-iron framework, bridging the divide between whilst connecting the table’s end supports. The elaborate nature of the frame’s decoration is what gives the tables their appealing clout, and it is thumbs up to the Telegraph restaurant for retaining the tables’ pivoting foot pedals. Attractive features in themselves, should you be prone to tippy tapping, as in his youth was one of my brothers, these pedals will entertain your feet at the same time as you sit and eat.

Telegraph Restaurant Zelenogradsk

Telegraph is a restaurant, it isn’t really a bar, but it has a bar of sorts, and I like that. I never feel at home and cannot quite get comfortable drinking alcohol in a barless zone. Sitting in a restaurant, seated around a table without a bar in sight just doesn’t do it for me. I liken the experience to sitting in a car which does not have a steering wheel. Without a bar something is missing; most likely it’s the bar.

For all its designer emphasis on the basic nitty gritty, Telegraph is cozy. In the all-important lighting department, which is the principal component in any attempt at coziness, Telegraph scores 11 out of 10. Excuse me, whilst I correct myself, my maths are notoriously weak; I meant to say scores 12.

In one sense, this is not good. Telegraph is so terribly cozy that it’s hard to get me out of there. Thank heavens that buses and trains work to things called timetables, which is something else worth mentioning. Telegraph is but a short walk away from the town’s bus and train stations, making it, if you time it right, and I usually make sure that I do, the perfect stopping-off place on your outward journey and a convenient traveller’s rest at which to pause on your way in.

Talking of food, as we now are, Telegraph’s speciality is the promotion of Baltic cuisine. It must be up to snuff as the restaurant is duly cited in Wheretoeat [in] Russia 2024 and in December 2022 was awarded the regional title of ‘Baltic Cuisine’.

Another award that Telegraph deserves is for its truly handsome website, especially in the category of ‘best designed for ease-of-use’. Navigate to its menu pages for a comprehensive and mouth-watering insight into the range of dishes it has on offer. And just in case you are wondering if I intend to provide you with links to the website and to the restaurant’s menu, wonder ye no more. Here is the link to Telegraph’s website: https://telegraph.rest/ and here is the link to its menu: https://telegraph.rest/menu . And whilst I am at it, here is the link to its page on social media: https://vk.com/telegraph.rest .

Ah, but it’s a grand menu to get lost in, isn’t it? But now that you are back, ask yourselves a question, are you fans of quirky? I most definitely am, particularly when it involves valuing and sustaining dying traditions. Thus imagine my delight on discovering that the present-day Telegraph salutes its earlier namesake by enabling its patrons to buy, write and send postcards directly from its premises to anywhere in the world. Who needs digital messaging and who needs things like WhatsApp when you’ve a pen, a card, a stamp and post box! WhatsUp with that? Nothing!

Postcards can be sent from the Telegraph restaurant at Zelenogradsk

My scientist friend, the one whom I mentioned at the beginning of this post, has a variety of different catchphrases to suit or not to suit as the case may be the topic of almost every conversation. For example, whenever we discuss Britain’s existential threat, the not-accidental migrant invasion, he will with cynicism and irony ask: “Well, what can we do about it?” When we are feeling philosophical, ruminating together on the mysteries of time, “Where would we be without it?” And when we discuss giants of history ~ politicians, generals, luminaries of the silver screen, pop stars, authors, artists and the figureheads of the American mob ~ his concluding remark is likely to be “And it didn’t do them any good!”

Let’s try to apply these questions and statements to the Telegraph in Zelenogradsk:

What can we do about it? Go there!
Where would we be without it? Deprived.
It didn’t do them any good! Well, obviously it didn’t. Because they decided to go somewhere else when they should have gone to Telegraph.

You see, when you look at it scientifically, it all makes perfect sense!

The main thing

Telegraph restaurant
Kurortny pr., 29, Zelenogradsk, Kaliningrad region, Russia, 238326
Tel: +7 908 290-55-21
Website: https://telegraph.rest/

Opening times:
Mon to Thurs: 12 noon to 11pm
Friday: 12 noon to 12 midnight
Saturday: 11am to 12 midnight
Sunday: 11am to 11pm

Note: Reservations required